Jerez - test times - September 29

29 September 2011

Fabio Leimer shaved another half a second off his best day 1 time on Thursday in the Racing Engineering car at the two-day test at the 4.428km Circuito de Jerez, his morning time of 1:26.701s setting the quickest that anyone managed.

Leimer was helped by slightly cooler conditions on Thursday morning, and he set his fast time just half an hour into the session after Javier Villa, Fabio Onidi and Kevin Ceccon had all briefly topped the timesheets. Onidi's time was still good enough for second place at the end of the morning with Arden's Dutch GP3 prospect Nigel Melkur close behind in third.

The afternoon session followed the pattern set on Wednesday and was significantly slower overall. GP3's James Calado had a spirited run at the top of the timesheets head-to-head with Jules Bianchi and Sam Bird but was eventually pushed down to fifth by strong outings from Julian Leal in the Trident and Simon Trummer in the Arden. The session saw a series of red-flags, the earliest arising from a spin by Kevin Ceccon that left him beached in the gravel; Leal sparked the second with a spin at the chicane, and Ocean Racing Technology's Yuki Shiraishi spun to trigger the third. Calado caused the fourth and final caution of the day twenty minutes before the end.

Arden, Super Nova and Coloni all ran the same driver line-ups as Wednesday, but there were appearances for Rupert Svendsen-Cook at Racing Engineering, Tom Dillmann at Barwa Addax, Alexander Rossi at Caterham Team AirAsia and Giovanni Venturini at Dams.

There is another two-day test session scheduled in Barcelona on 19-20 October ahead of the GP2 Final, which will support the F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi on 11-13 November.